The other day I watched an 8-minute YouTube video entitled ‘Larry King Live on UFOs’ from July 2007. Looking smug as always, everyone’s favorite UFO buffoon Stan Friedman was seated beside Jesse Marcel Jr. and hammering away at Larry, explaining the United States Army Air Force cover-up of the 1947 Roswell Incident.

As usual, Stan was vague about why the Air Force covered it up and how they handled it.

Then I realized if the Army Air Force (specifically Colonel Blanchard, Roswell’s base commander) hadn’t issued the flying saucer press release in the first place, if they’d handled their affairs in the usual military fashion, they wouldn’t have had to cover-up anything. So, the question Larry should’ve asked ol’ Stan was ‘why did Blanchard risk the Air Force’s reputation and national security to issue his controversial press release’.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Is there a ufologist anywhere out there who can answer that question with a logical explanation? For all my research, I’ve haven’t found one ufologist who tackles that question because, for them, there’s only one bad answer—that Blanchard issued the press release because Major Jesse Marcel Sr. found a flying saucer.

Why is that a Bad Answer?

Simple. We’ve all heard how Russia purchased America’s atomic secrets in the 1940’s from agents and spies—so how hard would it have been for them to steal technical secrets gleaned from a crashed flying saucer? It would have taken America time (most likely years) to exploit the advanced technology, but we’re talking about technology that could’ve made us a dominate force on Earth and in nearby solar systems for decades or centuries to come.

Consequently, if Marcel had really recovered a flying saucer, Blanchard’s press release might well have been the most treasonous act in history.

The other problem with the ufologists’ bad answer is it would trigger another tricky question they want no part of—why then did General Ramey publicly humiliate Marcel at the Texas press conference later that day if Marcel actually recovered the wondrous technology for the Air Force to exploit?

I sifted through the Air Force’s 1995 Roswell Report for any explanation as to why the Air Force issued the press release, but all I found (on page 47) was a suggestion that Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel ‘overreacted’. I found no other reference to the press release.

Since I don’t believe Marcel recovered a flying saucer and I don’t believe Blanchard and Marcel simply overreacted, I probed the question of why Blanchard issued his press release from the angle that Air Force Command, and he in particular, were competent. Based on those criteria, the only sensible scenario is that Blanchard’s flying saucer story and General Ramey’s weather balloon story were both approved cover-stories.

That scenario could also explain why former Major Marcel ‘told and sold’ his flying saucer story 31 years later with impunity. Ufologists contend he was free to tell everyone he really recovered a flying saucer even though the Air Force denied he did because he didn’t have a pension for the Air Force to revoke. Marcel had resigned his commission as an Air Force major after less than 10 years of military service.

However, if Marcel or any former soldier started divulging top-secret or classified military information to the public, I contend they could be imprisoned, or worse.

NOTE: The Washington Post published a story entitled Air Force Intelligence Joins Search for Flying Saucers, quoting, among others, an unnamed Army Air Force source. The story mentioned a reward, and it supported Roswell Army Air Field’s flying saucer press release of that same day. Coincidence? I doubt it.
Source: The Washington Post, 08 July 1947

Why did the Army Air Force need Cover-Stories?

In 1947, the United States Army Air Force faced 4 major problems.

1. Russia was rattling its sabers in East Berlin and only 2 years away from perfecting its own atomic bombs
2. Demobilization of the military after World War II stood to make the United States Army Air Force less powerful
3. They were losing high-flying Mogul balloons and the payloads of experimental acoustical equipment intended to eavesdrop on the progress of Russia’s atomic bomb and ballistic missile programs—finding them was crucial
4. But the Air Force’s biggest concern was winning their independence from the Army at a time of military cost-cutting, consolidation and shrinking budgets

Consequently, since national security usually takes precedence over budgetary concerns, the notion that flying saucers were real gave the Air Force a potentially powerful new enemy and a credible threat to help justify their existence, their expansion, and even their separation from Army control.

And it seems those cover-stories worked. Despite their apparent ‘overreaction’, less than three weeks after the scandalous press release that should have delayed or derailed the Air Force’s chance for autonomy, President Truman separated America’s Army Air Force into a separate and equal arm of the military. It meant instant and significant promotions for the top USAF officers, many of whom had been appointed or lobbied for by Truman.

I live for the day when UFOs will be found to be true. I remember the first time I heard about the UFO story from New Mexico and all I wanted to do was drive to the site and look for myself. I took a boy to a dance who had been accepted at Berkeley and Caltech. He had been a member of our beach club in Santa Monica and I asked him to a dance at school. He refused to admit he had been aware of UFOs.

Ike was President at this time and I asked our Senator from California how true the story was a bout Rosewell. Nobody claimed to know anything. A couple of years later I picked up a couple of Frank Edward’s books on UFOs and my interest doubled. In 1953, I was working at Hughes Aircraft and had joined a book club. I was told by my boss to stop reading or talking about UFOs. This was a time when America was considered a Christian nation and that made me mad. Years later I was dating one of my bosses and he was intrigued with the subject and suggested we drive to Rosewell and do some interviews. I should have taken him up on this plan but I married him. He had no memory of the invitation and we never got to New Mexico. Many of his students from Caltech came to our house to catch up with the rest of the classes and I did get to discuss UFOs with several of them. When my step-son Brick worked for Roddenberry and built the space ships for Star Trek, Ray refused to admit I had ever had an interest in the subject. I began to feel as if I had lost my mind.

My main interest is to know for certain that God does not exist and the bible is silly stuff. Not even my cats believe in God.

If you analyze any incident to death, you’ll come up with lots of little things that no one can explain. The world is just so complicated and people do things for all sorts of bizarre reasons. Conspiracy theorists always pounce on these things we can’t explain and use them to try to support their favourite theory. There’s no reason why a skeptic should bother trying to explain everything that happened in the Roswell incident or in any other incident.

I do not completely trust the Federal government to be honest and truthful in the incident at Rosewell. Governments want the control over many actions and the new coverage of these incidents.

The fear of realization that there are occupants of other planets who do make themselves noticed in America could bring the people of our planet into a total out of control situation. Our American residents have been trained from birth to learn their ethics and morals from an unseen God from heaven. Take that God away and there could be riots in the streets and a destruction of our cultural laws. The fear of God has ruled America since the early days of Pilgrims. Replace Jesus with little grey men from Mars would remove the base of control over many Americans.

Individual responsibility would be necessary before God is erased from our minds. I covered this possibility with my own kids but in doing so, my kids have been removed from playing and associating with other kids in our neighborhoods. People of faith have traded their own choices and rational thinking for their own private spaghetti monster. My kids survived this situation.

I do not completely trust the Federal government to be honest and truthful in the incident at Rosewell.

The problem is that things like this tend to get out. Sooner or later, somebody in a position to spill the beans and holding to some sort of activist “People’s Right To Know” mentality will do just that.

The fear of realization that there are occupants of other planets who do make themselves noticed in America could bring the people of our planet into a total out of control situation.

I have to disagree with that. The notion that there is life on other worlds has been around for almost two centuries in America, and there have even been proposals in the 1800’s to use light signals to contact the people they thought might be living on Mars. This was all at a time when America was vastly more religious then it is now, and there was nothing about this which has filled anybody with any special dread, nor has it in any sense lessened the control of religion.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if one day an alien ship did show up and the reaction to the event would…some nutters notwithstanding…would be a hugely underwhelming “So what?”

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Question authority and think for yourself. Big Brother does not know best and never has.

I hope you are right. I fear the Evangelicals who will never believe that there is life other than what Jesus talked about. If this is going to happen, please let it be in my lifetime. I want to die justified for all my comments to the Evangelicals.

It has always puzzled me that Evangelicals designed and developed a monster for their god. Listening to Falwell, Wyerick, and Robertson who spent years defining their God as being the worst possible spirit to put in charge. My old grandmother was furious with the television peachers and would rant for hours about the lack of love in those churches.

I sent both my girls to a private Christian school to learn the story of Jesus. After 6th grade they learned the truth.